Peasants who were Catholics, taught by Catholic doctrine and engaged in a Crusade started by the Catholic Church. Yet you don't see such mobs systematically destroying entire Jewish villages in Protestant areas, and you don't see it in Russian Orthodox areas until the 1500s.

Protestantism didn't even exist until the 1500s. I don't see why/how you're making the comparison.

A bunch of peasants got out of hand, directly went against the wishes of the Church, and killed some people. (Not very many, either, in the grand scheme of things.) When it comes to crimes against humanity, this is about a 1.1 on a scale of 1 to 10 for the Church, maybe about 3 for the peasants.

There may be an illusion of transparency here. Very few people remember where that phrase came from even if they've heard some version.

Hm, fair enough, but I was under the impression that most intelligent people at least knew that the Church had killed all the Cathars, and that's why Cathars don't exist anymore.

And if heretics won't repent you should expel them or kill them.

Somehow a lot of other religions have managed ok without doing that.

Managed what okay? No religion has managed to be as awesome as Catholicism, either. Catholics are responsible for universities.

I'm wondering if I'm misreading what you are saying here.. Are you arguing that the Catholic Church should kill Catholic heretics and groups that disagree because otherwise other groups who will be more violent will arise?

Well, they shouldn't do it anymore, for obvious reasons. But at that time it was a good idea. The Reformation led to a shift in values and political structures that reached one climax with the French revolution, heights never before seen with the Nazi camps and Soviet gulags, and will likely reach yet another climax with uFAI. The rise of atheism was the rise of sheer unadulterated Evil. It might have been better had the Church just killed all the protesters when they had the chance. But this is idle political speculation about counterfactual histories, so I mean, I'm probably horrifically wrong. But I could be horrifically right. It's hard to tell.

(ETA: By the way, I basically never get into "my side is better than your side" fights, and this fight is clearly inconsequential, so I'm mostly just having fun with it. Apologies if you were expecting me to be serious.)